AFK Gump? Please at least try to read before voting, this is why we ended up with Trump

The base assumption of this One is that you HAVE to know when it turned IDOC still. Unless I blatantly put something on the house sign that says "This house will fall between 8pm and 12pm" There is no way this is accessible for the average player. (Even doing that would require having the server somehow determine the players time zone and report the times accordingly, or report them in UTC requiring that they do the math) Using current logic you would still need to know when the house turned from greatly to in danger to know when the random 2-4 hour window would be. And even with that any decent group of house decay campers could still simply murder everyone when the house decays. Random timer or not.

Additionally another player in this thread even commented that they have posted timers publicly and no one bothered to show up.

Anytime there is an activity where a group of players can be successful with teamwork (Factions, PvP, House Decays, Pvm) there will be players who are disadvantaged when competing with said groups. The solution is not to change the game to punish the groups/teamwork for the benefit of the single player. The solution is for the single player to take advantage of all of the tools Felucca offers to succeed in that area.

And I can speak from experience in this area. Starting on a 3 year old T2A server with some of the best PvP'ers/Decay campers at the time on a very active server. I was murdered HUNDREDS of time. But I played smart. I used stealthers with nothing on them but house deeds. I kept my mage at a safe distance, usually in a town near a healer so I could send gates to safe locations near the decay to pickup my stealthers for quick rez's. I always marked 2-3 runes around the edge of the decay out of sign visibly so that the players at the decay would not notice my gate/stealther sneaking back into the location.

I might not have got all the loot, or every house spot but I fought tooth and nail for success and established myself as competitive in house decays. It was not easy, and like I said I died a ton, but I died on characters with nothing to lose. And all I had to do was survive to snag some loot while stealthed and sneak down a house spot. And half the time I managed this I always had a buyer for the house I placed (to the guys previously killing me) because they wanted to make a profit replacing the large house. Rather than calling these people idiots, cheaters, the 1% on the forums I established a respect based relationship with them and sold them the houses they needed at a reasonable price.

Over time I established myself in the IDOC community and allied with other players. In under a year I ran the IDOC group that everyone complained about and the same group of Pvp'ers that were killing me when I started were now considered loyal friends and worked decays right along with me.

Anything is possible for a new player here if you put the time in. No one becomes the best PvM'er in a week, no one is the best rare hunter in 2 weeks, No one becomes the best Pvp'er in a month. And no one becomes the best IDOC'er in short order. But the tools are there. With our current system ANY player has the ability to time a house decay within a 1-2 hour window. This is something all players can strive for to be an effective IDOC camper. They can know when to send in stealthers, they can know when to send in a mage or invite some of their PvP buddies for a fight. If we remove the ability for players to achieve perfection with their gameplay style, to benefit players who do not want to/are not interested in putting forth the same effort we are not only damaging our existing players we risk demoralizing all future players interested in this area of gameplay.

Any player of today can be tomorrows leader of the top "IDOC Group". But we will never get that way by constantly insulting the players who enjoy this playstyle on the forums. With all the hate through this group of players way (and to be clear, I have no idea who these people are publicly, I changes over the years like anything) I can only imagine that they might kill with extreme prejudice at house decays. When people constantly refer to you as "IDERP cheaters" you are going to consider anyone who shows at a house decay the enemy. When I played and went up against another group if IDOC'ers sometimes the best method forward was not force, it was politics. You make alliances, you offer to work together for a common goal and common profit and you earn each others respect. At its core that is why we have Felucca.

And again, as this issue at its core is players being upset at a single player, running a single macro to recall and check a few greatly houses every 5-10 minutes. I want to be extremely clear that anyone who takes the time to develop the item ID skill, mark a few runes and write an EXTREMELY simple razor macro can obtain the same information this player has. Nothing is stopping you from being just as successful as this player at tracking house decays timers. Everything that comes after getting a house decay timer are things that happen in felucca (Drama, Politics, Murder, Theft, Backstabbing, Looting and Shittalking).

Just to continue to point that house decays are a rewarding playstyle if you put the work in. I used to always try to get before/after pictures of decays that I was camping. Not easy as the race to run to loot sometimes made you forget to take a screenshot.

If anyone in this thread ever needs assistance with razor macros or has questions about being successful timing house decays, or useful tactics you are always welcome to obtain assistance from the staff. We are always happy to give advice and razor tips.




And like a player mentioned previously in a post here I believe Trojan Cow posted an extremely detailed guide to camping house decays. One of the most effective tricks I used when I played in 1998 and more recently in 2010-2011 was a map I made of the world broken up into scouting regions. We kept a communal house where all of the members of or group were able to scout and mark the times and regions that they scouted. Along with runebookss to common spots to start scouting these areas.

1998 Scouting Map - Updated Version I made in 2010


Another helpful trick to use is a google document where you can enter in the last seen greatly time and the first seen IDOC time so that it takes the guessed decay time and reports it in all the time zones of your group. A simple document to make but extremely effective in working together and avoiding wasting time.

This circles back to my original question. Please explain in detail how "Automation" is part of UOR when applied to the house decay community.

Finding a decaying House: Can be Automated Can not be Automated
Attempting to Determine Decay Window: Can be Automated Can not be Automated
Preparing for the house to decay: Can be Automated Can not be Automated
Camping the House Decay: Can be Automated Can not be Automated
Placing Houses at the Decay: Can be Automated Can not be Automated
Looting items from the Decay: Can be Automated Can not be Automated
Replacing Large Houses after a decay: Can be Automated Can not be Automated

If I am missing something here please share it with me. As I understand it having a timer on a house is one piece of a large process. I have yet to have someone explain to me how having a timer allows you to log out and commit no further activity and profit extensively from the house decay. Or once you have a house decay timer you can "start an automation macro" and collect the house placement and loot without being at the computer.

I will say that this game is 20 years old, As a development rule we do avoid forcing tedium for the sake of tedium. Our average player is 30-40 years old these days and d